"Blackbird" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a casual song of the lark in a fresh morning, of the blackbird and thrush at sunset, or the monotonous wail of the yellow-hammer, the silence of birds is now complete; even the lesser reed-sparrow, which may very properly be called the English mock-bird, and which kept up a perpetual clatter with the notes of the sparrow, the swallow, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... bismuto. Bit (piece) peco. Bit (horse) enbusxajxo. Bite mordi. Bitter akra—ema. Bitters vermuto. Bitumen terpecxo. Bivouac bivako. Blab babili. Black nigra. Blackboard nigra tabulo. Black-currant nigra ribo. Black pudding sangokolbaso. Blackbird merlo. Blacken nigrigi. Blackguard sentauxgulo. Blacking ciro. Blackish dubenigra. Blacksmith forgxisto. Bladder veziko. Blade (grass) trunketo. Blade (knife) trancxanto. Blamable mallauxdinda. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... to remark that he could not fathom what Aggie meant by that expression, as it certainly was not appropriate to the domestic circle at The Towers, consisting, as it did, of one rheumatic Anglo-Indian worm, and one able-bodied blackbird. ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... singing, a blackbird hopped on to the parapet, looked enquiringly in, his yellow bill moving from side to side, and (p. 097) fluttered away; a lark rose into the heavens warbling for some minutes, a black little spot on the grey clouds; he ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... charm was such, that by keeping it about me the first female name I should hear was destined, I believed in my soul, to be that of my future wife.* Sweet was the song of the thrush, and mellow the whistle of the blackbird, as they rose in the stillness of evening over the "hirken shaws" and green dells of this secluded spot of rural beauty. Far, too, could the rich voice of Owen M'Carthy be heard along the hills and meadows, as, with a little chubby urchin ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... is quite as careful of her employer's things as of her own. The full amount of her mischiefs often does not appear at once, as she is glib of tongue, adroit in apologies, and lies with as much alertness and as little thought of conscience as a blackbird chatters. It is difficult for people who have been trained from childhood in the school of verities,—who have been lectured for even the shadow of a prevarication, and shut up in disgrace for a lie, till truth becomes a habit of their souls,—it is very difficult for people so ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... a harsh nor a heavy one; there was a certain geniality in the appearance of things. The weather had changed to fair; the day, one of the last of the treacherous May-time, was warm and windless, and the air had the brightness of the hawthorn and the blackbird. If it was sad to think of poor Touchett, it was not too sad, since death, for him, had had no violence. He had been dying so long; he was so ready; everything had been so expected and prepared. There were tears in Isabel's eyes, but they were ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... round him as if to make a close inspection of his figure, then began to tease him. At first I thought it was all in fun—merely animal spirit which in birds often discharges itself in this way in little pretended attacks and fights. But the blackbird had no play and no fight in him, no heart to defend himself; all he did was to try to avoid the strokes aimed at him, and he could not always escape them. His spiritlessness served to inspire the chaffinch with greater boldness, ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... feathered songsters sing before February it is a sign of hard, ungenial weather. This applies particularly to the blackbird and throstle. The ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... who offered a series of twelve preliminary observations on the Theology of Rupert of Deutz, whereupon his host promptly put out his candle, leaving that man of supernatural memory to go to bed in the dark; and as Carmichael pulled up the blind in his own room, the day was breaking and a blackbird had begun to sing. Next afternoon Beaton had resumed his observations on Rupert, but now they were lying among the heather on the side of Glen Urtach, and Carmichael was asleep, while MacQueen was thinking that they would have a good appetite ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... breeze moved the vine-leaves of the arbour; the ripe barley swayed at intervals; a blackbird was singing. And, casting glances around them, they relished this ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... stream about eight yards wide, whose source is in the adjoining prairies on the south. At this cliff the Missouri is confined within a bed of two hundred yards; and about four miles to the south east is a large lick and salt spring of great strength. About three miles further is Blackbird creek on the north side, opposite to which, is an island and a prairie inclosing a small lake. Five miles beyond this we encamped on the south side, after making, in the course of the day, thirteen miles. The land on the north is a high rich plain. On the south it is also even, of a good quality, ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... walk, we pass under the rose-crowned aqueduct, and strike into the green avenue that darkens beyond; listening to the distant water bubbling up from the deepest recesses, and to the fitful whistle of blackbird and thrush, as they flit athwart the moss-grown gravel, and perch momentarily on the heads of mutilated termini and statues; whilst the clipt trees vibrate under the wings of others extricating themselves on a piratical cruise against a whole ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... prime of my devilishness in which Oxford renegades and racing younger sons had nothing on me, I found myself master and owner of a schooner so well known that she shall remain historically nameless. I was running blackbird labour from the west South Pacific and the Coral Sea to the plantations of Hawaii and the nitrate mines ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... shoot. He insisted, however, that only one gun should be taken out at a time, to diminish the danger of accidents. After that the boys took out their guns by turns when they went to work of a morning, and many a dead blackbird soon attested to their ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... birds, the sole speaker occasionally drops into English, or I should never have understood what was going on. He may be a blackbird or thrush, but I doubt it, because I know all their remarks, while his are new to me. If A.A.M. heard them he would probably tell me they were those of a "Blackman's Warbler," and I should have believed him—once. Hardly now, after he has so airily exposed his title as an authority; ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 28, 1919. • Various
... Bishop of Carlisle has been with me two days at Strawberry, where we saw the eclipse(572) to perfection: -not that there was much sight in it. The air was very chill at the time, and the light singular; but there was not a blackbird that left off singing for it. In the evening the Duke of Devonshire came with the Straffords from t'other end of Twickenham, and drank tea with us. They had none of them seen the gallery since it was finished; even the chapel was new to the Duke, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... himself, for there was plenty of time before five o'clock, and he stopped every few moments to examine some wayside plant, and to listen with the ardor of a true lover of nature to the merry voices of the thrush and blackbird singing a ...
— Marie Gourdon - A Romance of the Lower St. Lawrence • Maud Ogilvy
... playing with the golden meshes of her hair. No doubt he was fully conscious of his own inferiority, for he did not speak again. It was for him to wait. The silence deepened; in the heart of the wood a blackbird was piping madly ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... blackbird, sitting on a fir tree, began to sing; the horses scudded away as fast as they could, and there was once ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg
... will leave the crypt, and guard the entrance from without; allowing none, on any pretext, to pass within. When a blackbird whistles you will return, lift the stretcher, and pass with it, as heretofore, from the Cathedral to ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... Thrush, Lark, Blackbird, and Nightingale, and one or two choristers more. These are connected with the pheasants in their speckledness, and with the pies in pecking; while the nightingale leads down to the smaller ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... up in the air and gave a bird-call. Birds gathered and she swooped amongst them pulling feathers off their backs and out of their wings. Soon there was a heap of feathers on the ground—pigeons' feathers and pie's feathers, crane's and crow's, blackbird's and starling's. The King of Ireland's Son quickly gathered them into his bag. The falcon flew to another place and gave her bird-call again. The birds gathered, and she went amongst them, plucking their feathers. The King's Son gathered them and the blue falcon flew to another ...
— The King of Ireland's Son • Padraic Colum
... except the murmuring caws of the rooks in their nests, and the chattering shriek of a startled blackbird. The servant from behind ran up the steps and thundered at the door; it was opened, a broad line of light shone out, some figures appeared, and a man in livery came forward to open the carriage door, but to Aurelia's inexpressible horror, his face was perfectly black, with negro features, rolling ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a mellow but mocking blackbird's note which very nearly brought the Duke of Kent, and half-a-dozen of his compeers, upon them. However, they passed on, in spite of royal instructions to "stop and search—some of these little she-vixens are ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... overrunning the thicket with its emerald leaves and luxuriant flowers. And here and there, silvering the bushes, the elder offered its snowy tribute to the summer. All the insect youth were abroad, with their bright wings and glancing motion; and from the lower depths of the bushes the blackbird darted across, or higher and unseen the first cuckoo of the eve began its continuous and mellow note. All this cheeriness and gloss of life, which enamour us with the few bright days of the English summer, make the poetry in an angler's life, and convert every idler at heart into a moralist, and ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... rich. Why, there ain't an organ in the county can down her high B!" Then, warmed by my brother's sympathy, he fumbled in his pocket, and found a sheet of note-paper. Upon this he had written a quatrain that he proposed to read to us au clair de la lune. The lines were addressed: "To My Own Blackbird." ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... forest suddenly encompassed them. The morning was pretty far advanced; the merry birds twittered in their dun covert, brushing the dewdrops from the boughs with their restless wings. The thrush and blackbird poured forth a more melancholy note; whilst the timid rabbit, scared from his morning's meal, rushed by and sought his burrow. The wood grew thicker, and the sunbeams that shot previously in broad slopes across their path soon became as lines of intensely-chequered light piercing ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... The cow-blackbird, it is true, executes a certain guttural performance with its throat—though apparently emanating from a gastric source—which some ornithologists dignify by the name of "song." But it is safe to affirm that with this ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... birds see him first, jay and blackbird and thrush; They shriek at his coming and curse him, each one; With the clay of the vale on his pads and his brush, It's the Fallowfield fox and he's pretty near done; It's a couple of hours since a whip tally-ho'd him; Now the rookery's stooping ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 11, 1914 • Various
... prayer of the holy child, at which the broken parts came together and were made whole; that once on receiving his food in a basket, let down to his otherwise inaccessible cell, the devil vainly tried to vex him by breaking the rope; that once Satan, assuming the form of a blackbird, nearly blinded him by the flapping of his wings; that once, too, the same tempter appeared as a beautiful Roman girl, to whose fascinations, in his youth, St. Benedict had been sensible, and from which ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... the blackbird. "It really was the most extraordinary thing. I made that song last Spring, it came to me all of a sudden. There was the most beautiful she-blackbird that the world has ever seen. Her eyes were blacker than lakes are at night, her ...
— Fifty-One Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... February my joy came home. I remember that it was exquisite weather, the blackbird singing his passionate song in the bare boughs fit to break your heart with its beauty. There were high, white, shining clouds on the blue, and the mountains were grey-lavender. The wall-flower clumps were in bloom ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... entered his great shell and paddled off, using the ends of his wings; and then came Ko-ko-kas, the Owl, doing the same; and, Kosqu', the Crane, Wee-sow-wee-hessis, the Bluebird, Tjidge-is-skwess, the Snipe, and Meg-sweit-tchip-sis, the Blackbird, all came sailing proudly after. Even the tiny A-la-Mussit, the Humming-Bird, had a dear little boat, and for him the good Partridge had made a pretty little paddle, only that some thought it rather large, for it was almost an inch long. And Ishmegwess, ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... innocuous. A neighbouring yeoman (to whom I am indebted for some good hints) killed and opened a female viper about the 27th May: he found her filled with a chain of eleven eggs, about the size of those of a blackbird; but none of them were advanced so far towards a state of maturity as to contain any rudiments of young. Though they are oviparous, yet they are viviparous also, hatching their young within their bellies, and then bringing them forth. Whereas snakes lay chains of eggs every summer ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... interesting to note also in the first case that in her wildest delirium during an acute attack she lived through episodes of her past life. One example may be given. In the course of her delirium she thought that a "blackbird" had flown to her, touched her left wrist and taken away all her vitality. This depended on an experience of her going to Germany when a girl and meeting a young German officer whom she did not like. A few years later she went ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various
... Blackbird! If he had only kept his words to himself! In the twinkling of an eyelid, the Cat leaped on him, and ate him, ...
— The Adventures of Pinocchio • C. Collodi—Pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini
... were compassionate: both musicians were unhappy, inasmuch as they strove not for honour nor of their free choice, but for their safety and of hard necessity. I should have admired them more if they had pleased men, not beasts. Such solitude were far better suited to birds, to blackbird and nightingale and swan. The blackbird whistles like a happy boy in distant wilds, the nightingale trills its song of youthful passion in the lonely places of Africa, the swan by far-off rivers chants the music of old age. But he who would produce a song that shall profit ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... kind of blackbird, smaller than the former, and speckled very much like a starling. Indeed, I believe it is a species of that bird; for it frequents marshes, and lodges amongst the reeds at night. This bird is also destructive ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... I'd like to have some of his white fur for my nest," remarked Rusty the Blackbird. ...
— Bumper, The White Rabbit • George Ethelbert Walsh
... warming their backs in the sunshine scampered in alarm from their logs. Lizards blinked at him. Moccasin snakes darted wicked forked tongues at him and then glided out of reach of his tomahawk. The frogs had stopped their deep bass notes. A swamp-blackbird rose in fright from her nest in the saw-grass, and twittering plaintively fluttered round and round over the pond. The flight of the bird worried Wetzel. Such little things as these might attract the attention ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... they would linger there, listening to the pleading passion of the blackbird's note, the thrush's call to joy and hope. He loved her gentle ways. From the bold challenges, the sly glances of invitation flashed upon him in the street or from some neighbouring table in the cheap luncheon room he had always ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... no end. There were game birds and song birds, from the handsome pheasants to the modest little partridges, the royalists and the puritans of the woods, from the love-lorn wood-pigeon, cooing in the tall firs, to the thrush and the blackbird, making long hops as they quartered the ground for grubs; and the robin, the linnet, and little Jenny Wren all lived there in riotous plenty of worms and snails; and nearer to the great house the starlings and jackdaws shot down in a great hurry from the holes in old trees ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... that scorn the mounting wings, The happy heights of souls serene, I wander where the blackbird sings, And over bubbling, shadowy springs, The ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... The blackbird scraped his feet clean on a splinter of wood that was there. The splinter broke off and, when the bird flew away, there was quite a little heap of earth left. Next day a swallow came and next a lark and gradually quite a ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald
... clock, there was not such an accurate and unimpeachable instrument in existence as the little thermometer which hung behind the door. There was not a bird of such methodical and business-like habits in all the world, as the blind blackbird, who dreamed and dozed away his days in a large snug cage, and had lost his voice, from old age, years before Tim first bought him. There was not such an eventful story in the whole range of anecdote, as Tim could ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... palaces so fair, Built for the royal dwelling, In Scotland far beyond compare, Linlithgow is excelling; And in its park, in jovial June, How sweet the merry linnet's tune, How blithe the blackbird's lay; The wild-buck bells from ferny brake, The coot dives merry on the lake; The saddest heart might pleasure take To see all nature gay. But June is, to our sovereign dear, The heaviest month in all the year: Too well his cause of grief you know, June saw his father's overthrow, Woe to the ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... at him hard, and waited a minute. She opened the door, peered out, trembled again, crossed the threshold, and returned with the body of a blackbird. ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... carelessness that had the laugh of ridicule in it. He loved to make her voice go high and shouting and defiant with laughter. The baby was dark-skinned and dark-haired, like the mother, and had hazel eyes. Brangwen called him the blackbird. ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... town made for us bows of lancewood, and arrows of poplar, tipped with spikes of iron. With these we could not only split our "willow wand" at 80 yards distant, but the more skilful deemed an arrow hardly worth having until it had been baptized in the blood of blackbird or pigeon, and some of the neighbouring pigeon cotes suffered accordingly. The writer was presented with a bow made of bamboo, and arrows said to be poisoned, which a great traveller, then residing in Horncastle, had brought from the South Sea Islands. He lent ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... arrow he drew from the wounded deer was unlike the arrows in his own quiver. Another's stray shot had killed the deer. Patkasa had hunted all the morning without so much as spying an ordinary blackbird. ...
— Old Indian Legends • Zitkala-Sa
... in the garden, and one robin. I loved the robin best of all. His song was not so beautiful as the blackbird's or so mellow as the thrush's; but they hid and ran away from me, whilst the robin sought me out and stayed with me and sang me, all to myself, a little, tiny, gentle song of which I never grew tired. If I stayed quite still, ...
— The Prodigal Returns • Lilian Staveley
... chose our momentary camping-place under a buttonwood-tree, from out an exuberant swamp of yellow water-lilies and the rearing sword-blades of the coming cat-tail, a swamp blackbird, on his glossy black orange-tipped wings, flung us defiance with his long, keen, full, saucy note; and as we sat down under our buttonwood and spread upon the sward our pastoral meal, the veery-thrush—sadder ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... brite and fair. Potter Goram can stuf birds, so they look jest like they was alive. he stufed a red winged blackbird so good that the cat et it and dide. and then Potter he skun the cat and stufed her. i can skin the cat on the horizondle bar, ...
— 'Sequil' - Or Things Whitch Aint Finished in the First • Henry A. Shute
... little Ella, what the flowers Said to you then, to make your cheek so pale; And why the blackbird in our laurel bowers Spoke to you, only: and the poor pink snail Fear'd less your steps than those of the May-shower It was not strange those creatures loved you so, And told you all. 'Twas not so long ago You were yourself a bird, or else a flower. ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... quite well finish her packing in the morning. She sat down at the desk and set to work to arrange her papers. It was a warm spring evening, and the window was open. A crowd of noisy sparrows seemed to be delighted about something. From somewhere, unseen, a blackbird was singing. She read over her report for Mrs. Denton. The blackbird seemed never to have heard of war. He sang as if the whole world were a garden of languor and love. Joan looked at her watch. The first gong would sound in a few minutes. She pictured the dreary, silent dining-room with its ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... sun flung a carpet of gold across the sea. Phyllis's hair was tinged with it. Little waves tumbled lazily on the beach below. Except for the song of a distant blackbird running through its repertory before retiring for the night, ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... dead bird, of a species common in the desert, with white head or cap, and white tail, except the upper feathers; all the rest, legs and bill, black. It is about the size of a lark, but has a head like a blackbird. We supposed the one found had died from want of water, though it may have been killed by the mother ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... he was clearly the oracle of the boys, delivering his sentiments in the manner of one accustomed to dictate to all in and about the stables. In addition to this, there was an indescribable, but ludicrous salvo to his dignity, in the way of surliness. Some one had engaged him to carry a blackbird to town, and caused him to wait. On this subject he sang a Jeremiad in the true cockney key. "He didn't want to take the bla-a-a-ck-bud; but if the man wanted to send the bla-a-a-ck-bud, why ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... shadow of the elms, Di perched on the fence, and Nan leaning far over the gate with her hand above her eyes and the sunshine touching her brown hair with gold. He waved his hat and turned away; but the music seemed to die out of the blackbird's song, and in all the summer landscape his eyes saw nothing but the little ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... this kind bounty did dispense; For suddenly it was withdrawn, And all the birds were left forlorn, In a hard time of frost and snow, Not knowing where for food to go. He would no longer give them bread, Because he had observ'd (he said) That sometimes to the window came A great blackbird, a rook by name, And took away a small bird's share. So foolish Henry did not care What became of the great rook, That from the little sparrows took, Now and then, as 'twere by stealth, A part of their abundant wealth; Nor ever more would feed his sparrows. Thus ignorance ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... L'Alleg. 98, where the same expression is used. There is a close resemblance between the language of this song and lines 91-99 of L'Allegro. Milton's own spelling of 'holiday' is 'holyday,' which shows the origin of the word. The accent in such compounds (comp. blue-bell, blackbird, etc.) falls on the adjective: it is only in this way that the ear can tell whether the compound forms (e.g. holiday) or the separate words (e.g. holy ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... a negative personality; and it is certain that he has told a very entertaining story. There are in this volume battle, murder, sudden death, outlaws, cowboys, bears, American politics, and the author's views on the English blackbird, all handsomely illustrated, and the price is only what you would (or would not) pay for a stall to see a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 7, 1914 • Various
... the Templar, pointing to one of these nymphs, who seemed afraid of observation, and partly concealed herself behind the casement, as she chirped to a miserable blackbird, the tenant of a wicker prison, which hung outside on the black brick wall.—"I know the face of yonder waistcoateer," continued the guide; "and I could wager a rose-noble, from the posture she stands in, that she has clean head-gear and a soiled ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... many species, the sexes of which differ greatly from each other, are certainly monogamous. In Great Britain we see well-marked sexual differences, for instance, in the wild-duck which pairs with a single female, the common blackbird, and the bullfinch which is said to pair for life. I am informed by Mr. Wallace that the like is true of the Chatterers or Cotingidae of South America, and of many other birds. In several groups I have not been able ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... way in which I was captured. I was in love, as it is called; not only did she appear to me a perfect being, but I considered myself a white blackbird. It is a commonplace fact that there is no one so low in the world that he cannot find some one viler than himself, and consequently puff with pride and self-contentment. I was in that situation. I did not marry for money. Interest ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... to wear it out, And therefore bore it not about, Unless on holy-days, or so, As men their best apparel do. 50 Beside, 'tis known he could speak GREEK As naturally as pigs squeek; That LATIN was no more difficile, Than to a blackbird 'tis to whistle: Being rich in both, he never scanted 55 His bounty unto such as wanted; But much of either would afford To many, that had not one word. For Hebrew roots, although they're found To flourish ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... he fly; he had a large caterpillar in his beak, and no doubt his nest or the young from it were in the hedge. In feeding the young birds the old ones always perch first at a short distance, and after waiting a minute proceed to their fledgelings. Should a blackbird come at full speed across the meadow and stay on a hedge-top, and then go down into the mound, it is certain that his nest is there. If a thrush frequents a tree, flying up into the branches for a minute and then descending ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... and carried out to the fullest possible extent in accordance with the ante mortem wishes of the dead, were the obsequies of Blackbird, the great chief of the Omahas. The account is ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... for instance, and always to be really doing something, and to think that whatever he was doing was a thing of vast importance. Peter became very clever at helping the birds to build their nests; soon he could build better than a wood-pigeon, and nearly as well as a blackbird, though never did he satisfy the finches, and he made nice little water-troughs near the nests and dug up worms for the young ones with his fingers. He also became very learned in bird-lore, and knew an east wind from a west wind by ...
— Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... is another high bluff, not many miles from the cedar post of poor Floyd, that is well known as the burial-place of Blackbird, a famous chief of the O-ma-haw tribe; the manner of his burial was extremely strange. As I was pulling up the river, a traveller told me the story; and, when I had heard it, we pushed our canoe into a small ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge
... the flute came quick, rather brilliant like a call-note, or like a long quick message, half command. To her it was like a pure male voice—as a blackbird's when he calls: a pure male voice, not only calling, but telling her something, telling her something, and soothing her soul to sleep. It was like the fire-music putting Brunnhilde to sleep. But the pipe ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... neighborhood of Ronen and in the valley of Monville, the blackbird was for some time proscribed. The beetles profited well by this proscription; their larvae, infinitely multiplied, carried on their subterranean labors with such success, that a meadow was shown me, the surface of which was completely dried up, every herbaceous root ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... by now, and the moon was up. To their right, on the crest of a rise some two hundred yards away, a low wood stood out black against the sky. As they passed it, a blackbird rose up screaming, and a brace of wood-pigeons ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... of a bird awoke her. She recognized at once the sweet, shrill notes of a blackbird. Day was breaking. She began to shake, for she was chilled to the bone. The dampness of the night had made her clothes as wet as though she had been through ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... came next from a young pig in a dish placed before Mr. Dinsmore, and the song of the blackbird from a pie Grandma ...
— Christmas with Grandma Elsie • Martha Finley
... Poor Blackbird! If only he had not spoken! The Cat with a great leap sprang upon him and without even giving him time to say "Oh!" ate him in a mouthful, feathers ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... his war-dress, with silver cross on his breast and bow and arrows in his hand; then, the weight on the trunk being released, the sapling sprang back to its place and afterward rose to a commanding height, fitly marking the Indian's tomb. Chief Blackbird, of the Omahas, was buried, in accordance with his wish, on the summit of a bluff near the upper Missouri, on the back of his favorite horse, fully equipped for travel, with the scalps that he had taken hung to ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... pie was opened, the birds began to sing; And wasn't this a dainty dish to set before the king? The king was in the parlour, counting out his money; The queen was in the kitchen, eating bread and honey; The maid was in the garden, hanging out the clothes, There came a little blackbird and nipt ...
— The Only True Mother Goose Melodies - Without Addition or Abridgement • Munroe and Francis
... subgens was divided into four sections: 1, Hawk people, under the chief Standing Hawk (now dead). 2, Blackbird people, under the chief Wajina-gahiga. B, Starling or Thunder people. ...
— Siouan Sociology • James Owen Dorsey
... and furrowed face; the dead leaves fall gently and sadly through the calm, sweet air; grey mists drape the fields and hedges. The migratory birds have left, save a few late swallows; and as I sit at work in the soft, still rain, I can hear the blackbird's melancholy trill and the thin pipe of the redbreast's winter song— the air is full of ...
— The Roadmender • Michael Fairless
... given toll and tribute to the Northmen, and would no more enrich the lord of Elam with their treasure, but they rebelled against him. Onward the hosts advanced, intent on death. (Loud sang the javelins.) Amid the spears the blackbird, dewy-feathered, croaked in hope of carrion. In multitudes, with steadfast hearts, the warriors hastened till the hosts were gathered from afar, from south and ...
— Codex Junius 11 • Unknown
... grosbeaks, the orioles, the tanagers, the humming-birds, and many of the sparrows. Instead of the purple and bronzed grackles (the latter are sometimes seen on the plains of Colorado, but are not common), the Rockies boast of Brewer's blackbird, whose habits are not as prosaic as his name would indicate. "Jim Crow" shuns the mountains for reasons satisfactory to himself; not so the magpie, the raven, and that mischief-maker, Clark's nutcracker. All of which keeps the bird-lover from the East in an ecstasy of surprises until ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... any more, but worked quietly and watched the shadow, feeling sure the faint song came from it. Presently she began to hum the tune she caught by snatches; and, before she knew it, she was singing away like a blackbird. Baby stopped crying, and ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... the man, taking off his paper cap and rubbing up his bristly gray hair. 'We call Jack "The Blackbird" among us; he is a famous whistler, ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... now tell us, although the days are cold, and the snow not yet gone, that brighter times are coming. The clear concerts of the frogs ring loudly out from marsh and lake, and at this season alone is heard the lay of the wood-robin, and the blackbird. The green glossy leaves of the winter green, whose bright scarlet berries look like clusters of coral on the snow, now seem even brighter than they were—the blue violet rises among the sheltered moss by the old tree roots, and ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... something wherewith to pay his hospitality, was hastily putting them back, when the man, looking up, caught sight of a bundle of oaten pipes among the miscellaneous wares. He plucked one to him, and in a moment the air was full of tender liquid notes—a thrush's roundelay. Then a blackbird called and his mate answered; a cuckoo cried the spring-song; a linnet mourned with lifting cadence; a nightingale poured ...
— The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless
... With Keats, Shelley, Swinburne, and our own Yeats, one feels that they have all sought shelter from disagreeable actualities in the world of imagination. James Stephens, as he chanted his Insurrections, sang with his whole being. Let no one say I am comparing him with Shakespeare. One may say the blackbird has wings as well as the eagle, without insisting that the bird in the hedgerows is peer of the winged creature beyond the mountain-tops. But how refreshing it was to find somebody who was a poet without a formula, who did not ransack dictionaries ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... that he wanted to talk and he could be over-urged to talk if the right pressure was brought to bear. Janice came away, leaving the eagerly curious pecking at him—the one white blackbird ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... whom the kingbird seemed suspicious was a purple crow blackbird, who every day passed over. This bird and the common crow were the only ones he drove away without waiting for them to alight; and if half that is told of them be true, he had ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... the rustle of birds through the branches, and the dreamy murmur of waters lost in deepest woods, and all the fairy echoes whispering when the leaves are motionless in the noonday heat; then followed notes, cool and soft as the drip of summer showers on the parched grass, and then the song of the blackbird sounding as clearly as it sounds in long silent spaces of the evening, and then in one sweet jocund burst the multitudinous voices that hail the breaking of the morn. And the lark, singing and soaring above the minstrel, sank mute and motionless upon his shoulder, and ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... great hall paved with vari-coloured marbles and other precious stones and hung with cages of sandal and aloes wood, full of singing-birds, such as the thousand-voiced nightingale[FN48] and the cushat and the blackbird and the turtle-dove and the Nubian warbler. My heart was ravished by the song of the birds and I forgot my cares and slept in the aviary till the morning. Then I opened the fourth door and saw a great hall, with forty cabinets ranged on either side. ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... laughter, and he put out a hand and tousled the thick curls in his favorite caress. One of the tresses caught in his jewelled ring; and as he bent to unfasten it, he stared at the wavy mass in lazy surprise. It was as soft and rich as the breast of a blackbird, and the fire had laid over it a ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... little path chequered with the shades of aspens and ashes and the most verdant and lively of all the family of trees. Here a broad, rude stone steppeth over a lazy spring, oozing its way into grass and weeds; anon a fresh pathway divergeth, you know not whither. Meanwhile the wild blackbird startles across the way and singeth anew in some other shade. To have seen Fiammetta there, stepping in silk attire, like a flower, and the sunlight looking upon her betwixt the branches! I had not walked (in the body) with Romance ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... by a rustling of the leaves behind her. She paused and looked round fearfully. A blackbird darted out of the hedge and away over the fields. Zelma smiled at her own alarm, and read on, till ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... full of morning sounds as the lads trudged along the Warwick road together. An ax rang somewhere deep in the woods of Arden; cart-wheels ruttled on the stony road; a blackbird whistled shrilly in the hedge, and they heard the deep-tongued belling of hounds far ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... the shade, resting my burning feet and achiag bones, and I watched Nielsen as he whistled over the camp chores. Then I heard the sweet song of a meadow lark, and after that the melodious deep note of a swamp blackbird. These birds evidently were traveling north and had tarried at ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... among the common people, is this: you may pass through the whole South of France, as well as the county of Nice, where there is no want of groves, woods, and plantations, without hearing the song of blackbird, thrush, linnet, gold-finch, or any other bird whatsoever. All is silent and solitary. The poor birds are destroyed, or driven for refuge, into other countries, by the savage persecution of the people, who spare no pains to kill, and catch them for their own subsistence. Scarce a sparrow, ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... And Columbine—Columbine had a trill of laughter in her voice whenever she spoke to him. He liked to hear her play the guitar and sing soft songs in the twilight. Adam liked it too. He was wont to say that it reminded him of a young blackbird learning to sing. For Columbine was as yet very shy of her own talent. She kept in the shallows, as it were, in dread of what the deep ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... whin's a dusky yellow And the road a rosy white, And the blackbird's call is mellow At the falling of night; And there's honey in the heather Where we'll make our last abode, My tunes and me together At ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... La Fontaine, "is that Vanel, that determined blackbird, knowing that I was coming to Saint-Mande, implored me to bring him with me, and, if possible, to present him ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the crow would eat animal food in any form, and might not be rightly classified as a grain-eating bird, Prof. Stearns said the crow was thus classified by reason of the structure of its crop being similar to that of the finches, the blackbird, the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... and business again, after a small playing the truant, for I find that my interest and profit do grow daily, for which God be praised and keep me to my duty. To my office, and anon one tells me that Rundall, the house-carpenter of Deptford, hath sent me a fine blackbird, which I went to see. He tells me he was offered 20s. for him as he came along, he do so whistle. So to my office, and busy all the morning, among other things, learning to understand the course of the tides, and I think I do now do it. At noon Mr. Creed comes to me, and he and I to the ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... I well remember! Dame Nature was just donning her variegated gown of rustic-brown, while fitful airs from the realms of Jack Frost were painting the wild roses and forest leaves in cardinal hue, and the blackbird, thrush and musical nightingale flew low and sang hoarse, but continually, in their assemblages for migration to lands of ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... in plenty—a whole tobacco-pipe bowl full, carefully measured out of the old yellow canvas money-bag that did for a shot belt. A starling could be knocked off the chimney with this charge easily, and so could a blackbird roosting in a bush at night. But a woodpigeon nearly thirty yards distant was another matter; for the old folk (and the birdkeepers too) said that their quills were so hard the shot would glance aside unless it came with great force. Very likely the ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... faint grey stole over the distant horizon, and suddenly a cloud reddened before his eyes. The sun was not in sight, but was rising, and sending forerunners before his face. The cattle began to stir, a blackbird burst into song, and before Drumsheugh crossed the threshold of Saunders' house, the first ray of the sun had broken on a peak of ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... picture books, trains of cars, toy pianos; but not one of their playthings was alive, like Piccola's birdling. They were as pleased as she, and Rose hunted about the house until she found a large wicker cage that belonged to a blackbird she once had. She gave the cage to Piccola, and the swallow seemed to make himself quite at home in it at once, and sat on the perch winking his bright eyes at the children. Rose had saved a bag of candies for Piccola, and when she went home at last, with the cage and her dear swallow ...
— Christmas Stories And Legends • Various
... himself as, after looking vainly for more stray leaves, he trudged on, enjoying the bobolink's song, the warm sunshine, and a comfortable sense of friendliness and safety, which soon set him to whistling as gayly as any blackbird in ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... game... in fact there is a total absence of game.... Animals may be dumb but they are not stupid, so for miles around Tarascon the burrows are empty and the nests abandoned. There is not a quail, not a blackbird, not the smallest rabbit nor even ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... go before a faint light stole down to guide his way, and he reached the spot where the passage was roofed in with dead branches and twigs, and as he reached it, just faintly heard, came the shrill cry of a blackbird—Pink-pink-pink!—from somewhere in ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... Carlton, and 'afterwards'. We could change at my Governor's place into borrowed, stolen, and hired evening-kit, paint the village as scarlet as Sin or a trooper's jacket, and then come home, like the Blackbird, to tea. I am going, and if I can't get 'leaf' I shall return under the bread in the rations-cart. Money's the ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... friend of the United States. In General Harrison's day he was United States Indian agent at Fort Wayne, but was killed in the massacre of Fort Dearborn, in 1812, by the faithless bands of Potawatomi under the chief Blackbird. ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... was justified. At the end of his regulation time Harold stopped crying suddenly, like a clock that had struck its hour; and with a serene and cheerful countenance wriggled out of Medea's embrace, and ran for a stone to throw at an intrusive blackbird. ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... fragrant night floated in upon us, and the sounds of the men at their meat or making merry about the township; and whiles we heard the gibber of an owl from the trees westward of the church, and the sharp cry of a blackbird made fearful by the prowling stoat, or the far-off lowing of a cow from the upland pastures; or the hoofs of a horse trotting on the pilgrimage road (and one of ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris
... thrushes, and starlings. They tore away the seaweed with their strong bills, pitching it right and left behind them in as workmanlike style as any miner, and so boring deep notches into the edge of the bed. When a blackbird had made a good hole he came back to visit it at various times of the day, and kept a strict watch. If he found any other blackbird or thrush infringing on his diggings, he drove him away ferociously. Never were such works ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... sound of the Church bell to their ears through the window, half open to admit the breezy breath of spring; the cawing of the rooks and the song of the blackbird came with it; the sky was clear and blue, the ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... pebbles, that, as soon as they were dry, became as dull and homely as the flints upon a garden path. I have toiled at this childish pleasure for hours in the strong sun, conscious of my incurable ignorance; but too keenly pleased to be ashamed. Meanwhile, the blackbird (or his tropical understudy) would be ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... flaunting, meek, patient, faithful, saucy, spirited, violet, dahlia, sheep, pansy, ox, dog, horse, rose, gentle, duck, sly, waddling, cooing, chattering, homely, chirping, puss, robin, dove, sparrow, blackbird, ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... staircase, at the summit of which you enter Nirvana by means of the "House on the Garden," a glass-house floored with boards and furnished with rustic chairs, a lounge and a writing-table; and here, amid the tree-tops, I write to the music of thrush and blackbird, with restful glances at the sailing clouds or at the sunny weald, that circles for miles around and ends to the south in the "downs" that hide the English Channel. Perhaps it is because my landscape takes in Tennyson's ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... doe awoke, and to the lawn, Begemmed with dew-drops, led her fawn; The gray mist left the mountain side, The torrent showed its glistening pride; Invisible in flecked sky, 35 The lark sent down her revelry; The blackbird and the speckled thrush, Good-morrow gave from brake and bush; In answer cooed the cushat dove Her notes of peace, and rest, ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... once, as we do Shakespeare's. La Bruyere passes from mysterious ironies to bold and coarse invective, from ornate and sublime reflections to phrases of a roguish simplicity. He suddenly drops his voice to a shuddering whisper, and the next moment is fluting like a blackbird. The gaiety with which he mocks the ambitions of the rich is suddenly relieved by the dreadful calm with which he reveals the horror of their disappointments. He is never in the same mood, or adopting the same tone, for two ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... quiscula. Redwing Blackbird. Ageloeus phoeniceus. Yellow-Throated Warbler. Dendroica dominica. Baltimore Oriole. Icterus galbula. White-Bellied Nuthatch. Sitta carolinensis. American Robin. Merula ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... reflected in the music of the time. Schubert, that sweetest soul of tears and laughter, understands every shade of wistfulness, and yet again and again in his music it seems as though the universe had become, to quote a lover of his, one immense and glorious blackbird. Mozart, in 'The Magic Flute', as Goethe seems to have recognized, sings the very song of union between the unreflecting joy of the natural man and the strenuous self-devotion of the awakened spirit. Beethoven, greatest of them all, plumbs the lowest depths of ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... ye feathered songsters, Lift your praises loud and high, Merry lark, and thrush, and blackbird, In the grove and in the sky Make your music, shame our dumbness, Till ...
— A Christmas Faggot • Alfred Gurney
... the birds love-learned song, The deawy leaves among! For they of ioy and pleasance to you sing, 90 That all the woods them answer, and theyr eccho ring. [* Mavis, song-thrush.] [** Descant, variation.] [@ Ouzell, blackbird.] [$ ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... very much, if you could work as well as she does, and show as strong a pair of arms as she can. I haven't seen a prettier picture for some time than she made of herself this morning, up to the elbows in suds, singing like a blackbird whilst she ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... golden broom To bind thy flowing hair; For thee the eglantine shall bloom, Whose fragrance fills the air. We'll sit beside yon wooded knoll, To hear the blackbird sing, And fancy in his merry troll The ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie
... thy nest, Robin-redbreast! Sing, birds, in every furrow; And from each hill, let music shrill Give my fair Love good-morrow! Blackbird and thrush in every bush, Stare, linnet, and cock-sparrow! You pretty elves, amongst yourselves Sing my fair Love good-morrow; To give my Love good-morrow Sing birds, ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... tender boughs loaded with young fruit, pricked by the sharp claws and beak of the insolent blackbird, complained to the blackbird with pitious remonstrance entreating her that since she stole its delicious fruits she should not deprive it of the leaves with which it preserved them from the burning rays of the sun, and that she should not divest it of its tender ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... might pursue her mission of mercy and succour at night. Thus passed some days, and then Jessica's blood grew restless; the narrow room seemed to her stifling and unendurable, and she pined for the open air, as a caged blackbird ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... comes nearer to my own interpretation. The body of this bird is in colour a mixture of grey and brown, but its tail and wings are most beautifully marked with dark zig-zag bars, which make it very handsome. In size it is between the blackbird and the lark. Like the woodpecker, it has a very long tongue, which is covered with a glutinous matter, and which it inserts into the grass roots or tree bark, in search of its ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... alone. He abhorred the dull and savage joy of the sportsman in a lucky shot, an unerring aim, and once when I met him in the country he had just been sickened by the success of a gunner in bringing down a blackbird, and he described the poor, stricken, glossy thing, how it lay throbbing its life out on the grass, with such pity as he might have given a wounded child. I find this a fit place to say that his mind and ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Mr. O'Callaghan was told by a country boy that he had seen a blackbird with a topknot; on which Mr. O'C. very judiciously told him to watch it and communicate further with him. After a time the boy told him he had found a blackbird's nest, and had seen this crested bird near it and believed he belonged to it. He continued ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... angry scream and chatter at the approach of an enemy, darts the "ousel cock so black of hue, with orange-tawny bill." How dull a lawn would be without his pert movements when he comes down alternately with his russet wife. One blackbird with a broad white feather on each side of his tail haunted Elderfield for two years, but, alas! one spring day a spruce sable rival descended and captivated the faithless dame. They united, chased poor Mr. Whitetail ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... she cried, "'you must find your fun'—are those the words of the song, Margot?—Oh, look, look!" she pointed joyously to a blackbird on top the swaying maple outside her window. ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... smallest interest. That had been disastrous, and she shrank from creating more trouble by her impetuosity. To hurt this man would be serious. No one could hurt Charles except himself; and even then he would always wake up in the morning singing and whistling like a happy boy or a blackbird in ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... of Spring. The blackbird opens his yellow beak, and whistles cool and clear. There is blue magic in the morning; the sky, deep-blue above, melts into white where it meets the hills. The wind waits for you up yonder—will you go to meet it? Ah, stay here! The hedges have put on ...
— Once on a Time • A. A. Milne
... class lessons on the habits, movements, and foods of common birds, as crow, woodpecker, king-bird, phoebe, blackbird, etc. (See pp. 217-22.) ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... quavering, as ladies do when they practise. The street did not approve of the continuance of the noise; but neighbours are difficult to please, and what would Morgiana have had to do if she had ceased to sing? It would be hard to lock a blackbird in a cage and prevent him from singing too. And so Walker's blackbird, in the snug little cage in the Edgware Road, ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sat in his place, looking up at the little girl, who was smiling to herself as she watched the blue dragon-flies dance among the ferns, a blackbird tilt on the alderboughs, and listened to the ...
— Marjorie's Three Gifts • Louisa May Alcott
... the little foster-parents have in all probability no suspicion of the trick that has been played on them. Birds do not take deliberate notice of the size or colour of their own eggs. Kearton somewhere relates how he once induced a blackbird to sit on the eggs of a thrush, and a lapwing on those of a redshank. So, too, farmyard hens will hatch the eggs of ducks or game birds and wild birds can even be persuaded to sit on eggs made of painted wood. Why then, since they are so careless of appearances, should ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo
... altogether. A dead bird or two were passed, lying in the snow, claws in air and already stiff: a felt and a yellowhammer were side by side at the bottom of the hill. It was like the dead in gay uniforms, lying scattered after an action. A little further on there was a blackbird, to Murphy's very evident glee. He found it at once, and was for carrying it home; it was still warm. But this was no time for fooling. It was already dark and growing darker; the proper thing to do was to keep together and make for home. ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... my head at night: the first thing in the morning, these maestrini would pipe up. But these, even if you can pardon their imprisonment, are for the house. In the garden the wild birds must plant a colony, a chorus of the lesser warblers that should be almost deafening, a blackbird in the lilacs, a nightingale down the lane, so that you must stroll to hear it, and yet a little farther, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Carmen What the Swallows Say — An Autumn Song Christmas The Dead Child's Playthings After Writing My Dramatic Review The Castle of Rembrance Camellia and Meadow Daisy The Fellah — A Water-Colour by Princess Mathilde The Garret The Cloud The Blackbird The Flower that Makes the Springtime A Last Wish The Dove A Pleasant ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier
... birds' nests in our orchard. One day when we were in the orchard we saw a big nest with rags woven in it, and I spied a corner of an embroidered handkerchief that was given me a year ago last Christmas. Papa was up in the tree, and he pulled it out and threw it down to me. I think it was a blackbird's nest. The eggs were green, with dark brown ...
— Harper's Young People, June 8, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... use opposing her once she had fallen in love with Jacopo. He was a handsome, dark fellow, with insinuating manners, and a voice like a blackbird. When the two were together there was no one else in the world for them. He had flamed up with the fierceness of his southern nature: she with the heat of a heart slow to love, and once fired ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan |
